Anal readers say: "I want Spider-Man grow up WITH ME!".

Actually, Spider-Man grows ALONE, if he really does, because if you want a fictional character live a real life like yours... you're the one who need growing a bit!

I wished Spider-Ma could "grow up"with me... but I meant "I want he faces new enemies and meet new people", not "He must age like me". And nowI'm 2 years older than him... next goal: to be older than Superman! In 3 years (yes, for me Superman is still 29). 

The three major eras in my life: 
     1) when I was younger than Superman -- I was a little kid, and Superman was a grown-up.  I hardly ever thought about numbers -- one time, I remember going through the work of figuring out how old I'd be in the year 2000.  "Thirty-six?" I thought.  "I'll NEVER be THAT old!"

     2) when I was the same age as Superman -- somewhere along the line, I learned that Superman's "official" age was twenty-nine.  I was twenty-nine in 1993, the same year Superman "died."  Things were clearly going better for me.

     3) when I was older than Superman -- I'm at an age now where Superman could be my son (if I'd been straight and gotten some girl pregnant in high school).  Here I get older and he's holding steady, lucky guy. 

I'm getting close to Earth-2 Superman's age.  GEEZ!  Another epoch!

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Tell that to the minibrains who insisted the monthly SPIDER-GIRL comic was "proof" baby May had not died!

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That was precisely the reason he was put in grad school. You can be in grad school forever. It doesn't have to be a "clock".

Unfortunately, there are too many idiots on both sides of the equation (fans and pros alike) who simply cannot or will not play the game. "He's been in grad school for YEARS! He must have aged some!"

For as long as I have been bashing my head against this stupid argument, I have made the same point: sit down with all the issues of SPIDER-MAN, or FANTASTIC FOUR, or X-MEN whatever you like, and tote up the elapsed time. You'll find there's really not as much as you might think. (A classic example: the original "Galactus Trilogy" took place in less than one afternoon!)

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And that's another side of this stupid problem. Dick is pushing thirty, while Bruce is... what? DC and Marvel seem unable to do math. If one character in a "shared universe" ages, EVERYBODY ages.

(One of the dumbest of all the dumb letters I have received came back when I was doing FANTASTIC FOUR, and a reader wrote in to say that the "solution" to the aging problem was "easy"! Since most of the older Marvel characters had "radiation origins" simply establish that characters like the FF, the Hulk, Spider-Man, even the X-Men are themselves radioactive, and the radiation not only prevents them from aging normally, it prevent people around them from aging normally! Sure. Cuz, these pockets of non-aging people spotted around NYC and the rest of the country wouldn't draw ANY attention to themselves, would they?)

Tell that to the minibrains who insisted the monthly SPIDER-GIRL comic was "proof" baby May had not died!

The "What if?" should be enough for them to....nah...some people will never get it....

On another note, the "grad school" idea also does not establish Peter as mid-twenties or so when most people (like me) enter grad school.  Since Pete's a genius level student, he could easily have finished High School at 16 or 17 and finished his undergrad by 20 or 21!

The biggest change with Spider-Man is that now that he's been married, even if it is undone, he's been linked to Mary Jane.  Whereas before he never has a relationship last.  Clark and Lois are always a team, and their marriage, while affecting the series certainly, hasn't nearly the effect of Peter/MJ.

Then the torch was passed to a younger group, who tended to write Parker and his pals pretty much as themselves, 20-somethings who moved Peter further away from his high school beginnings and began to bring in issues that, it could be argued, were not properly part of the experiences of the target audience.

But, the audience, or at least a substantial part of it, was getting older, too, and Parker et al began to suffer a bit of the syndrome that seems to afflict Superman -- middle-aged guys writing about middle-aged guys for middle-aged guys.

The original audience, the audience that had made Spider-Man such a huge success in the first place (and I know, because I was part of it) were forgotten or ignored. And, "mysteriously", sales dropped.

The final, and most devastating stage came, of course, when those shrunken sales were accepted, and even applauded. (Remember a few years back when one of the Spider-Man writers showed up in this Forum celebrating the "huge" sales on the latest issues -- sales that would have gotten the book canceled a few years earlier? The triumph of mediocrity and diminished expectations.)

Well if it was up to me Peter would be in high school, Gwen would be alive, Norman would be alive, etc.  I definitely would prefer not to see Peter worried about "real life" problems.  I have enough of those on my own.  Even though I still enjoy the book (and think they are back in a little better direction) I would still like to see it go further.

When Peter/Spider-Man went through some of the big changes (graduating, getting married) was there a big call for this from the fans?  I know the age of readers was skewing a little higher but were they clamoring for Peter to be like them and have their same problems?

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From the fans who had "crossed over" and were writing, drawing, and editing the books, yes. (It's the same thing that made CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS "necessary".)

This is the eternal problem -- the fan-turned-pro who cannot let go of "fan think" and consider what is needed for the books and the characters, not what s/he has been grumbling for years (too many years, usually!) needed to be done!

To once again quote the cogent observation of Len Wein: "The first story you'd do as a fan should be the last story you'd do as a pro." Wrap that in Stan's immortal "Never give the fans what they THINK they want," and you have what should be the "Hippocratic Oath" of all comicbook professionals.

(Historical Note: Parker and MJ getting married came from Stan, who was writing the newspaper strip and wanted to add more "soap opera" elements. It was NOT his intent that this translate over to the comics. It was the Powers That Were in editorial at the time who saw Spider-Man getting married as a stunt that would capture civilian attention and generate sales. DC had just done something similar with the "wedding" of Lois and Superman, which sucked in a lot of non-fans who did not realize the "special issue" was a flashback to the marriage of the Earth2 versions of the characters. What TPTW did not realize was that civilians didn't know or care enough about Spider-Man's backstory to even be aware that he wasn't married! Rather than a huge spike in sales, the marriage produce a tidal wave of apathy. But, alas, the deed was done.)